A Quiet Evening
by Solo By Choice
Summary: Vir invites Lennier over to introduce him to a game. A follow up to my previous "Joyride."
When Vir Cotto invited Lennier to his quarters a week after the Motorcycle Incident, Lennier was surprised. The Centauri had been quite bruised up and Lennier had worried he might be angrier than he'd seemed at the time. It was easy to forget how delicate some aliens were, but to Lennier's good fortune, this alien was also very forgiving.

"Come in, come in!" said Vir. Lennier stepped carefully across the threshold into the cluttered room.

* * *

"I'm so glad you could make it. Sit down, sit down, do you want something to drink?" Vir babbled, gesturing towards the couch. It was mostly covered in colorful pillows. Lennier wasn't sure about moving them, so he decided to stand and wait.

Vir was bustling around in the small kitchen area. "Do you want something to drink? Do Minbari drink bravari? No, I supposed not but - I'm not sure we have anything else..."

"Thank you for the offer, but I am not thirsty," said Lennier, making the decision to be diplomatic and not mention, _again_ , that Minbari couldn't metabolize alcohol. Somehow that fact seemed to have been left out of whatever information the aliens on the station had received. Or maybe just the Centauri.

"Oh, okay." Vir stopped rummaging through cabinets and came over to stand by Lennier. "I hope you don't mind it's kind of a mess in here. I wasn't sure you'd come, um, I'm sorry about what happened last time."

"But it was my fault!" Lennier had explained this before, but apparently Vir hadn't understood. "I accept all responsibility. If you've come to any harm because of it, I'm very sorry and I'll explain what happened to Ambassador Mollari or -"

Vir interrupted, waving his hands in that nervous way he had. "No, no, Londo doesn't care, don't worry. I just wanted to say, well, I probably shouldn't have agreed to ride the motorcycle in the first place."

Lennier decided to let the topic drop. Whether Vir blamed Lennier or not didn't really matter, it had still been Lennier's fault. "I hope whatever you invited me over to do is less potentially dangerous?"

Vir went pink, but smiled a little, so Lennier counted that as a victory.

"Have you ever played a video racing game?" Vir asked as he pushed some pillows aside and sat down on the couch. Lennier still wasn't sure what to do with the pillows, so he sat on the floor.

"No, I haven't."

Vir handed Lennier a small box with some buttons on it. "Then watch and learn."

The object of the game, Vir explained, was to use the controller to navigate a small personal transport on the video screen in order to win a race against either the computer or other real opponents. Lennier wasn't sure about the point, especially given the clear inaccuracy of the race track, which looped and turned in ways a real road never would.

When he pointed this out, Vir laughed. "It's not for teaching people to drive, Lennier. It's just for fun. I mean, what do Minbari do for fun?"

Lennier considered. "Well, in temple, we are instructed in experiencing joy. Personally, I enjoy studying obscure alien history and solving differential equations by hand."

Vir laughed again, but it wasn't a mean laugh. Lennier decided that he liked it.

It took two games for Lennier to get the hang of controlling the vehicle - you could drive off the road, it turned out - and soon he was winning more often than not. Vir didn't seem to mind. Sometimes Lennier could even get his vehicle to fly above the road for a few moments when there was a quick drop in the road. It was _fun_.

Lennier had the evening off, so he let himself lose track of time. He'd mastered several more race tracks and Vir was trying to explain a different sort of game to him (one which involved fighting and jumping up and down on floating platforms, apparently), when Ambassador Mollari barged into the room, shouting something about Narn opera.

"Lennier! What are you doing here? Not stealing our state secrets, I hope?" Londo laughed at his own joke. Desperate to avoid spending more time with the ambassador (who was even louder when drunk than sober, it seemed), Lennier bowed and excused himself, citing the late hour.

Vir followed him into the hallway, apologetic.

Lennier didn't want to hear him apologize for more things that weren't his fault. "Thank you for inviting me over this evening, Vir. I enjoyed the video game... it was very instructive." He bowed.

Vir bowed awkwardly in turn. "We should do this again sometime."

"Maybe without any interruptions?"

Vir laughed. "Yeah, that sounds good."


End file.
